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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

We need a word for this technique where you get a customer to up their purchase by selling them on additional things.

Isn't that known as an "upsell" or "upselling"? It's what the guys at the sneaker store do with socks and laces, no?

Socks and laces is actually 'cross-selling'. Up-selling is getting the buyer to buy something more expensive than the thing they are currently buying/contemplating buying.

Yes! That was the one.

We now need a word for this technique where you use irony to mock someone. ;)

Super size me

You know I wonder why the "super size me" technique isn't seen more with other products. Is it the bad PR/association with fast food or does that model not work for other business types?

I think the super sizing gimmick is easy to implement in fast food chains since it can basically be a bullet point in the training manual and you can encourage employees to use the tactic to increase their sales with game-like award programs (employee of the month, etc).

The idea of presenting non-essential products to impulsive buyers at the point of payment is much more ubiquitous though: supermarkets and candy/magazines comes to mind.

They may use the carrot, but trust me, its the stick that keeps them doing it. I once worked at a movie theater where if a manager heard you forget to upsell to a customer, you could be fired on the spot. I even witnessed it a few times. Manager's friend bought some popcorn, didn't get upsold, manager asked said friend if he was suggested anything, and when he found out he wasn't, walked over to the counter and told the kid to take off his vest and leave.

Was it for failing to upsell or was it simply because the manager was a jerk who wanted to feel important in front of his friend.

No doubt both. Managers at those kind of jobs tend to be dead-ended mid 20's, and need to push around teenagers to feel important since anyone their age can see the truth. They also tend to prey on teenage girls... not a pretty sight.

Note: Probably not the case everywhere, but definitely was the norm where I grew up in the burbs.

I've had employees at the Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble get annoyed at me for only ordering a tall drip coffee, since it drives down their average transaction size, this being the metric on which they're being judged.

I tend to respond to upselling attempts with silence and a blank stare.

But it is! It's just cross-selling. When you sell a guy a suit, you don't offer the belt first, you go for the money item, the suit. Then after he buys the suit you sell the belt because its less of a big deal since he's already spent the money.

With that in mind, how much is super sizing in relation to the original meal?

Sounds like exploiting humans' tendency to disproportionately take into account sunk costs.

Perhaps is can read it as anchoring too... once the suit price is in mind, the price of the belt seems small.

More like relative cost- the price of the belt is a small % of the price of the suit as a whole. Similar to how it's easy to sell the power seats, w/e other luxury on a car for $200 when the car is $20k+.

Anchoring would be if the suit salesman shows you a $3k suit to start out. Or more realistically say an $800 suit for your average person-not so outrageous as to offend you, but probably still out of your range, so you'll be more likely to spend $400 on a suit than if he had just started out in a more standard $300 range.

"Would you like an extended warranty with that, sir?"

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